Liar Liar
by Lyrical Ballads
Summary: He came to her door so often, he might as well keep a spare toothbrush at her washstand. Beni/OC.


**Disclaimer: **I do not own _The Mummy_.

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><p><strong>Liar Liar<strong>

She sat in a corner of the bar, her kohl-rimmed eyes alert as she puffed on a cigarette, legs crossed impatiently under the chipped wooden table. Her masses of dark hair tangled to her shoulders and a few men gazed at her longer than necessary, but she ignored them. Her eyes were on a shifty, scrawny looking man who sat near the bar counter, his red fez like a beacon across the smoke-filled room. He hadn't noticed her yet, but he would in due time. She would make sure of _that_.

He said he would come see her yesterday morning. He _always_ said he would come on this day and at that time, but his word was like the gaudy trinkets he sometimes tried to pay her with: completely fake.

She took a long drag on her cigarette and narrowed her eyes, watching him take a nervous swig of liquor. He always drank like it might be the last time any alcohol passed his lips, or like the drink could be snatched him from any minute, and she supposed she understood such shifty cowardice. She also lived her life on the edge, knowing she could fall prey to disease or a man's violence at any given moment.

But oh, how she hated him.

He finished his drink and ordered another one from the bartender, that _whine_ of his reaching her ears across the room, and his fingers tapped idly upon the countertop, no doubt just itching to steal something. He probably had no intention of paying for those drinks and would slip away when the bartender's back was turned, just like he often slipped out of her room in the early morning hours, leaving her with nothing but a hangover and disappointment. He thought he could get through life taking whatever he pleased and then scampering off like a rat, but she would prove him wrong.

Beni Gabor had toyed with her one too many times.

Just as she suspected, he left his empty glass and began to sneak away, but he caught sight of her before he slipped off. His wary expression turned into a smirk and he slunk over to her table.

She uncrossed her legs and sat up a little straighter, ready for him.

"Angeline, it is an honor to see you here. I did not know you left your bedroom." Angeline's name was the only word he didn't garble with his accent. He pronounced it like a Frenchman, though he wasn't French.

"A whore isn't tied to her bed, you know," said Angeline.

He took a seat across from her, eyes glinting wickedly as he eyed the neckline of her dress. "Oh, but she can be."

An ordinary woman might have slapped him, but Angeline was no stranger to such talk, especially from Beni. "I'll make sure you don't see me again unless you pay your debts."

"What debts? I owe you nothing."

She put her cigarette out on the tabletop and glared at him. "You owe me money."

"Oh, that. I will pay you next time."

"That's what you said three days ago."

"It takes more than three days to get that kind of money."

"Liar," said Angeline. "All you have to do is swipe someone's wallet or sell one of your cheap trinkets to a tourist. I bet you've got plenty of money right now, you miserable bastard."

He snickered at her; a pathetic, choked laugh that came from a life of sneaking and too much cheap liquor. "If I am a miserable bastard, then you are my miserable mistress. I know you will wait for me to return from Hamunaptra."

"You're not going to Hamunaptra," she said. "You _never_ go to Hamunaptra."

"How would you know?" he retorted. "You're in your nice, safe whorehouse every time I go out to the desert. Three Americans want to find treasure, so why should I deny them such a trip?"

"Hamunaptra isn't even real," said Angeline.

"Oh no, it is real enough," said Beni. A strange look entered his eyes, but it vanished as soon as it came.

"You're a liar."

"Believe what you want. The Americans are paying me well and I will give you half when I return."

She knew he wouldn't give her half. He would give her a tenth if she was lucky, which was better than nothing. "When do you leave?"

"Tomorrow morning."

"If I find out you're still in Cairo by tomorrow night, I'll have you castrated."

"No, you will not," said Beni, a grin twisting his features. "You need me too much."

"You're not my only customer. I'll get on just fine without you."

"Then why do you keep sleeping with me?"

Oh, how she _hated_ him. "Because you pay me to," said Angeline. "And half the time you don't even pay until I make you."

"I will pay you tonight." Beni eyed her neckline again, greed shining in his eyes. "There are no worthwhile women on the way to Hamunaptra and you are my last chance before I leave."

How romantic. Angeline didn't care if she was his last resort or not, as long as she got her money. "You're lucky I make time for a rat like you," she told Beni. "Let's go."

She took him to her room in the brothel, only a couple of dingy streets away from the bar, and gave him what he had promised to pay for. She didn't choose such an unsavory life, but it was the only one she knew and Beni was certainly not the worst customer she had ever had. Her mother had been a French prostitute until she died twelve years ago of a whore's disease, while her father was a stranger whose name Angeline would never learn.

His name meant nothing to her. All men were unreliable, especially the one who occupied her room, smoking one of her cigarettes with a self-satisfied air, as if he owned the place. And perhaps, in a strange way, Beni _did_ have a claim on her room. He came to her door so often, he might as well keep a spare toothbrush at her washstand, and he never spent his nights with any of the other girls in the house.

She didn't really hate him.

She stood before her mirror, pulling a brush through her waves of dark hair, and watched him in the glass as he lounged on her bed and continued to smoke. She knew that soon he would pull a flask out of some hidden pocket or other, the same flask he always filled with gin or scotch or whatever he could get a hold of, for she knew his habits like the back of her hand. God, they might as well be _married_.

"Put that brush away and come back over here," Beni requested. His accent always sounded a bit thicker after he took his time with her.

Angeline kept on brushing. "Why should I?"

"Because I have paid you to."

It was true that she made him pay her before he could touch a single hair on her head, and the money she kept in her jewelry box had sweetened her mood considerably. Of course, he might steal back his payment when she was asleep, like he had done a few times before, but she always managed to get it back from him. Angeline set down her brush and strolled back to the bed, wearing nothing but a nightgown she had thrown on.

"Tell me about Hamunaptra," she said, sinking onto the mattress beside Beni.

He finished his cigarette and pulled out the flask, just as she knew he would. "I thought Hamunaptra did not exist."

"Doesn't matter if it's real or not. What do _you_ think it's like?"

"It is cursed," he said, frowning down at the flask in his hand. "But there is treasure. Treasure that anybody would risk their lives trying to get."

"_I_ wouldn't risk my life for treasure."

"You say that because you have never seen great riches."

"Neither have you," she pointed out.

"Yes, but you have never had to fight to have a roof over your head. You whores have it easier than you think."

Angeline bit her lip, unable to think up a reply. Her life was anything but easy, no matter what Beni said, but she couldn't help but wonder what Beni had been through to make him into the person he was. Surely he wasn't born a thieving, lying, scheming weasel, and he must have belonged to _somebody_ at one time.

Except now he was hers.

As Angeline sat there in bed and watched Beni take a swig from his flask, she knew that she was the only person he had in the world. He was like the mangy cat she had tried to adopt when she was a girl, and Angeline supposed she had always had a soft spot for strays and lost souls.

No, she definitely didn't hate him. She could never hate him.

"Don't spend too much time out in that desert," she murmured in his ear. "I like _your_ money best of all."

"Just my money?" he asked with a smirk.

"Don't flatter yourself. I've had a dozen johns more appealing than you."

"Then why do you sleep with me?" Beni asked again.

"Because you need me," said Angeline. "Because I'm all you've got."

He tasted like gin and cigarettes when she kissed him, and he wasted no time getting her onto her back all over again. She gave him what he paid for, but she also gave him the attention and pity he had probably lacked his whole life, not because it was her job, but because she knew he was a stray without a true home. Never mind the fact that he lied and cheated as easily as he ate and breathed. Never mind the fact that he would be gone the next morning, off to swindle some more unsuspecting foreigners.

As long as the night lasted, she would make his pathetic life a little more worthwhile.

He was gone when she woke in the morning, though he didn't touch her jewelry box, and she guessed he would return in a week or two to give her the share of the Americans' money he said he would give her. She wouldn't get half, or even a quarter, but she might be able to get a decent amount if she took him to her room and coaxed it out of him.

But days passed and she saw no sign of him.

Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, but he never returned to her door. Nobody had seen him since the morning he left for Hamunaptra, and Angeline hated herself for missing him.

Beni Gabor was always a liar.


End file.
